Racism @ MindSay 
Have you noticed that the Mainstream Media (MSM), Democrats and Republicans are predicting Jeremiah Wright’s racism against Whites, friendship with anti-Semitic Farrakhan and the promotion of the Black Liberation Theology will have little effect on Barack Hussein Obama’s Campaign if he should win the Democratic Nomination for President?
It must be a Politically Correct think for those three groups to agree on the effect of Wright.
I am here to tell you that Black Liberation Theology (BLT) alone not just Wright’s deviant Black Supremacist/Victimhood stance should affect how Americans vote if Obama should win the Democratic nomination.
Proponents of BLT have said the theology stems from the concern Jesus Christ had for the poor and downtrodden. Critics have viewed BLT as Black Supremacism disguised with the word “Christianity”. BLT is more akin to Marxism and the Black Power movements (such as the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam). BLT criticizes the White Man for all the ills the Black Man’s past history and present circumstances, utilizing facts to distort the impact on Blacks is a huge exaggeration of BLT.
Rev. Rob Schenck was on Hannity’s America show discussing Jeremiah Wright’s embracing of BLT. Schenck made it clear that BLT is very close to the Liberation Theology of Latin America which was overtly pro-Marxist (supporting Latin American Communists), Anti-Catholic and Anti-American.
JRH (Hat tip ChristianNewsWire.com)
I have created this blog to maintain continuous conversation among the busy lives of all us. We must reflect critically on issues but also maintin an activism among these topics. Please feel free to respond. I encourage all thoughts; hoever, threats or comments not complementayr and constructive will be deleted.
-Antonio Garcia
Indiana University
Writing for the Claremont Institute, Harry V. Jaffa rebuts the anti-American, anti-white, generally racist and Black victimization sermon excerpts you probably have heard or read of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
In case one has been ignoring the American Race for President of the United States, Wright was the former Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ and the acknowledged spiritual mentor of Barack Hussein Obama.
The one angle I am not sure I agree with Jaffa is his unique theme of justifying White enslavement of Black Africans that eventually have become African-Americans. I don’t disagree with his reasoning; however his case just comes across as the very attitude that has made Black Americans agree with Wright’s vision of Black victimization by the “White Man.”
In my way of thinking racism is racism. It is irrelevant if the racists are White or Black. If a Black person hates a person because he is White it is wrong. If a White person hates a Black person because he is Black it is wrong.
I am certain a Black American that reads Jaffa’s essay and has any knowledge of history will point out that many of the Founding Fathers that are claimed to decry the institution of slavery were slave owners until the day they died. This includes icons like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
With that bit of criticism on my part I have to say Jaffa’s essay is a good read that examines the reality of times of the existence of slave institution in America. An America in which a Black man still faces some hurdles yet with some good old fashioned American work ethic can and have become successful citizens of the United States of America. So I say get over your past and contribute to building a future in which racism becomes merely a practice of the fringe few or with God’s help eliminated (the last thought of elimination may be a bit utopian but I had to add it).
JRH
Our Racist, Sexist Selves
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NY Times Published: April 6, 2008
To my horror, I turn out to be a racist.
The University of Chicago offers an on-line psychological test in which you
encounter a series of 100 black or white men, holding either guns or
cellphones. You’re supposed to shoot the gunmen and holster your gun for the
others.
I shot armed blacks in an average of 0.679 seconds, while I waited slightly
longer — .694 seconds — to shoot armed whites. Conversely, I holstered my
gun more quickly when encountering unarmed whites than unarmed blacks.
Take the test yourself and you’ll probably find that you show bias as well.
Most whites and many blacks are more quick to shoot blacks, no matter how
egalitarian they profess to be.
Harvard has a similar battery of psychological tests online (I have links to
all of these from my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, and my Facebook page,
facebook.com/kristof). These “implicit attitude tests” very cleverly show
that a stunningly large proportion of people who honestly believe themselves
to be egalitarian unconsciously associate good with white and bad with
black.
The unconscious is playing a political role this year, for the evidence is
overwhelming that most Americans have unconscious biases both against blacks
and against women in executive roles.
At first glance, it may seem that Barack Obama would face a stronger
impediment than Hillary Clinton. Experiments have shown that the brain
categorizes people by race in less than 100 milliseconds (one-tenth of a
second), about 50 milliseconds before determining sex. And evolutionary
psychologists believe we’re hard-wired to be suspicious of people outside
our own group, to save our ancestors from blithely greeting enemy tribes of
cave men. In contrast, there’s no hard-wired hostility toward women, though
men may have a hard-wired desire to control and impregnate them.
Yet racism may also be easier to override than sexism. For example, one
experiment found it easy for whites to admire African-American doctors; they
just mentally categorized them as “doctors” rather than as “blacks.”
Meanwhile, whites categorize black doctors whom they dislike as “blacks.”
In another experiment, researchers put blacks and whites in sports jerseys
as if they belonged to two basketball teams. People looking at the photos
logged the players in their memories more by team than by race, recalling a
player’s jersey color but not necessarily his or her race. But only very
rarely did people forget whether a player was male or female.
“We can make categorization by race go away, but we could never make gender
categorization go away,” said John Tooby, a scholar at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, who ran the experiment. Looking at the challenges
that black and female candidates face in overcoming unconscious bias, he
added, “Based on the underlying psychology and anthropology, I think it’s
more difficult for a woman, though not impossible.”
Alice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, agrees:
“In general, gender trumps race. … Race may be easier to overcome.”
The challenge for women competing in politics or business is less misogyny
than unconscious sexism: Americans don’t hate women, but they do frequently
stereotype them as warm and friendly, creating a mismatch with the
stereotype we hold of leaders as tough and strong. So voters (women as well
as men, though a bit less so) may feel that a female candidate is not the
right person for the job because of biases they’re not even aware of.
“I don’t have to be conscious of this,” said Nilanjana Dasgupta, a
psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “All I
think is that this person isn’t a good fit for a tough leadership job.”
Women now hold 55 percent of top jobs at American foundations but are still
vastly underrepresented among political and corporate leaders — and one
factor may be that those are seen as jobs requiring particular toughness.
Our unconscious may feel more of a mismatch when a woman competes to be
president or a C.E.O. than when she aims to lead a foundation or a
university.
Women face a related challenge: Those viewed as tough and strong are also
typically perceived as cold and unfeminine. Many experiments have found that
women have trouble being perceived as both nice and competent.
“Clinton runs the risk of being seen as particularly cold, particularly
uncaring, because she doesn’t fit the mold,” said Joshua Correll, a
psychologist at the University of Chicago. “It probably is something a man
doesn’t deal with.”
But biases are not immutable. Research subjects who were asked to think of a
strong woman then showed less implicit bias about men and women. And
students exposed to a large number of female professors also experienced a
reduction in gender stereotypes.
So maybe the impact of this presidential contest won’t be measured just in
national policies, but also in progress in the deepest recesses of our own
minds.
The test can be found at this link: http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/
The article at this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Nicholas+Kristof%2C+April+6%2C+2008&st=nyt&oref=slogin
And yet, our world would have eaten the man alive. We have a great desire to see the mighty fall, and heroes crushed and tainted. They would take his dream of hope and find one loose thread to tug until it all unraveled. What would remain would be all that he ever was: an ordinary human being. Then we would brand him. He would be called a racist because he wouldn't settle for superficial optimism about race. He would have been called un-American long before now because he wouldn't be waving a flag and pretending that the fight for equality is over.
No, Dr. King would still be dreaming of something better.
At least now we hear his inspirational speeches once a year and are reminded that there are people in our past, despite their occasionally missteps, that helped inspire great change in our society. In his death, he has remained largely unscathed-- praised as a civil rights hero. I want to leave you with words of the legendary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a man who believed above all else that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God, Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Please enjoy.
================================================================
"Now, early in the century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual's abilities and talents. And in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We've come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.
The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available. In 1879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty:
The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the, that of a taskmaster or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.
Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problem of housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished."
================================================================
"I’ve seen my dream shattered as I’ve walked the streets of Chicago (Make it plain) and seen Negroes, young men and women, with a sense of utter hopelessness because they can’t find any jobs. And they see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. And not only Negroes at this point. I’ve seen my dream shattered because I’ve been through Appalachia, and I’ve seen my white brothers along with Negroes living in poverty. (Yeah) And I’m concerned about white poverty as much as I’m concerned about Negro poverty. (Make it plain)
So yes, the dream has been shattered, (Amen) and I have had my nightmarish experiences, but I tell you this morning once more that I haven’t lost the faith. (No, sir) I still have a dream (A dream, Yes, sir) that one day all of God’s children will have food and clothing and material well-being for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, and freedom for their spirits. (Yes)"
================================================================
You can read more on my MLK Jr. day post...
Showing 1 - 5. [ Next ]